Soliciting advice for a non gamer total system.

[FishAk]

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]I want to put a total system together for my daughter. Actually, I'll just be buying the parts, and she will have to assemble. I want her to get her hands dirty. She doesn't game, and is currently satisfied with her all-in-one TouchSmart IQ507, with 4Gb and a C2D T5850 running Vista. So I want something fairly easy, and not too expensive, but complete.[/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]This is what I've come up with:[/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Processor: Athlon II X3 425 $63[/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]MB: ASUS M4A88TD-M/USB3 $105[/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Case: [/FONT]Rosewill Micro Tower[FONT=Times New Roman, serif] $40 with shipping[/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Memory: Mushkin 4GB DDR3 1333 1.5V $67[/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Cooler: Corsair H50 $80[/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]PSU: SeaSonic X650 Gold 650W $140[/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Hard Drives: 2 X Samsung Spinpoint F3 1Tb $130[/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Optical Drive: Lite-On 5.25” DVD +/- RW $24[/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Card Reader: Rosewill 75 in 1 with 3 USB 2.0 $ 1 eSATA $25[/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Fans: [/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman, serif]2 X [/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman, serif]GentleTyphoon 120mm 1450RPM[/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman, serif] $36[/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Keyboard & Mouse: [/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Wired USB Keyboard & Wireless Optical Mouse $22[/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Battery Backup: [/FONT]DirectUPS 600W $80

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Monitor/Speakers: [/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Asus [/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman, serif]23.6" 5ms HDMI Full 1080P Widescreen[/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman, serif] $190[/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]This comes up to $1012.[/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]I don't know about the GPU. This board has onboard HD4250. Perhaps that's good enough for now.[/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]I think I want to wait for the G3 SSDs to come out before I get one for her. I'm thinking I could probably get a 40-60Gb Sandforce SSD for around $50 then.[/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]I picked the 3 core since she probably doesn't need more, and there's a chance the other core is functional. What is the likelihood of running the fourth core?[/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]I know the case isn't the most attractive, but it's small with good airflow front to back. The H50 will allow for a little room, and not restrict the airflow too much. With just the two GT fans and the H50 water-pump running, this should be reasonably quiet.[/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Am I missing anything for a well rounded general computing system? What should I change?[/FONT]

 

[Chapbass]

Sigh...a comp like that for your daughter, with the exception of video card, that machine is the same or better than my main pc in all regards...

Build looks good...id say maybe not spend 80 bucks on the H50 and instead get into LGA1156 territory? At least thats what I'd do. With no graphics card in that thing, itll be putting out barely any heat.

Also, 650w PSU with no graphics card? Just noticed that. Get the 60-70 dollar corsair 400w psu and call it a day. You can still put a decent graphics card in it if she wants to, but if shes not a gamer, 650w is flat out overkill.

edit: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-003-_-Product

That guy.

Edit2: Also, for a general computing system (and depending on how she is towards this sort of thing), I always suggest never skimping on the things you actually interact with: Monitor, Speakers, Keyboard, Mouse.

Monitor looks great, speakers is kinda iffy, but honestly if she hasn't id say take her to bby and try out some mice. My GF LOVES her comp so much more since we moved her from a basic mouse to an MX Revolution.

 

[fffblackmage]

What is this system for? What can't the current system do?

 

[Blain]

A Windows 7 upgrade would be a nice addition.

 

[mfenn]

The PSU, HSF, and twin 1TB drives scream overkill to me. That system doesn't need anything more than the stock HSF, a single F3 ($55 today!), and a $25 430CX.

 

[Davidh373]

A gold 650W!!!! Get the 430 like mfenn said. also, get a Athlon II X4 or an i5 w/ a 1156 motherboard.

 

[Zap]

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Case: [/FONT]Rosewill Micro Tower[FONT=Times New Roman, serif] $40 with shipping[/FONT]
Have your daughter pick out the case.

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Cooler: Corsair H50 $80[/FONT]
Not necessary. Just use stock cooler and enable "Smart Fan" in BIOS.

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]PSU: SeaSonic X650 Gold 650W $140[/FONT]
Complete and utter overkill. The system you spec'd can probably run on a 150W Pico PSU. Get one of those $40 (regular priced) Seasonic 300W Bronze units.

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Hard Drives: 2 X Samsung Spinpoint F3 1Tb $130[/FONT]
Huh? I'd recommend an SSD+HDD combo.

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Fans: [/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman, serif]2 X [/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman, serif]GentleTyphoon 120mm 1450RPM[/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman, serif] $36[/FONT]
$36 worth of fans for a $40 case? Use stock fans that come with case. If too noisy, undervolt them.

 

[RavenSEAL]

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Case: [/FONT]Rosewill Micro Tower[FONT=Times New Roman, serif] $40 with shipping[/FONT]
Have your daughter pick out the case.

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Cooler: Corsair H50 $80[/FONT]
Not necessary. Just use stock cooler and enable "Smart Fan" in BIOS.

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]PSU: SeaSonic X650 Gold 650W $140[/FONT]
Complete and utter overkill. The system you spec'd can probably run on a 150W Pico PSU. Get one of those $40 (regular priced) Seasonic 300W Bronze units.

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Hard Drives: 2 X Samsung Spinpoint F3 1Tb $130[/FONT]
Huh? I'd recommend an SSD+HDD combo.

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Fans: [/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman, serif]2 X [/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman, serif]GentleTyphoon 120mm 1450RPM[/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman, serif] $36[/FONT]
$36 worth of fans for a $40 case? Use stock fans that come with case. If too noisy, undervolt them.

This....all over this^

 

[RavenSEAL]

P.s...that is the most expensive non-gaming PC build i have ever seen lol...just buy her a freaking DELL, take it apart and make her put it back together.

 

[dmoney1980]

for a few bucks more you can get the case below. I used it on numerous builds. It looks nice and is spacious, and you can put a 120mm fan in the back for exhaust.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811121001

The 2 hard drives and PSU are overkill though, all else looks fine.

 

[FishAk]

Thank you all for your responses.

Looking again at the PSU, I see the one I chose is worse than overkill, since in this setup it will be outside it's optimal load range. My daughter will be moving to a small town in Alaska that runs diesel generators, and power is quite expensive. This and noise pushes me toward the 87 -90 percent efficient PSUs. The least expensive 80+ Gold rated PSU I see is the 550W NZXT at $106 with shipping. It's likely that over the course of a year, the $21 difference between the NZXT and Corsair 450W can be recouped while enjoying less noise.

Since she will be moving, I chose the smallest case I could find that has good airflow and can hold all the required components. This case is actually small enough to fit inside one of those wheeled handbags that are allowed in the overhead compartment on an airline. I'm not sure that's so necessary, but I know when she moves, space will be a premium. I especially like the Silverstone TJ08, but it's hard to justify at $113. The HEC 6C28BB8S looks like a good case for $47, but with the harware in the center of the front cover, there is no opertunity to put a fan between the cover and case. Additionally, I don't see where the 3.5” card reader would go, as all the blanks on the cover look like 5.25”.

I chose the H50 for two reasons; space and noise. But I'm not convinced that I made the right choise. I have never put together an AMD system before, and I don't know anything about the stock HSF. I suppose it really depends on how much power she wants from her CPU. If she wants to start doing a bunch of encoding, she will want 4 cores going as fast as they can. In that case, I should probably buy a chip with 4 guaranteed working cores for about $30 more than a 3 core with only the possibility of firing up the 4th core. It makes sense to wait on the H50 till she starts demanding more of a load, but doesn't want to pay the noise penalty. How noisy is the stock cooler?

No one addressed the likelihood of using the 4th core of a 3 core CPU. I suppose there really isn't a good answer, and I should probably just pay the extra 50 percent premium to have a sure thing. The 50 percent higher cost only provides about 15 percent improvement, but compared with the overall cost, $30 isn't that much.

I don't understand why anyone would recommend, or run their own computer, with only 1 hard drive. You know that your hard drive is going to fail. Without a second drive to back up the one you use, how do you expect to recover when your drive gets trashed? In my view, running a computer without two drives is like jumping without a reserve chute. Anyone who does this often enough will eventually crash and burn.

Thank you very much, mfenn, for pointing out Newegg had dropped their 1Tb F3 price.

This system will run Windows 7, and will get an SSD in 6 months or so.

In light of your recommendations, I have:

Switched to the Athlon II X4 640 +$37

Switched to the NZXT 550W PSU -$34

Add to Keyboard/Mouse budget $100

Use stock HSF -$80

Lower 1Tb F3 price -$20

Total now is $973 (-$39)

 

[betasub]

Simply having another HDD in the same system or case isn't the recommended way to store your back-up. Off-site (or at least, external to the case & power) is better.

 

[FishAk]

While this is true for periodic backups, it only works from the last time the external drive was connected. An internal backup allows more current duplication. An automatic backup program can be set to run each day, or several times per day.

An external solution provides strategic coverage, while an internal drive is tactical.

 

[mfenn]

Thank you all for your responses.

Looking again at the PSU, I see the one I chose is worse than overkill, since in this setup it will be outside it's optimal load range. My daughter will be moving to a small town in Alaska that runs diesel generators, and power is quite expensive. This and noise pushes me toward the 87 -90 percent efficient PSUs. The least expensive 80+ Gold rated PSU I see is the 550W NZXT at $106 with shipping. It's likely that over the course of a year, the $21 difference between the NZXT and Corsair 450W can be recouped while enjoying less noise.

By "$21 difference", you mean "$75 difference" right?

Since she will be moving, I chose the smallest case I could find that has good airflow and can hold all the required components. This case is actually small enough to fit inside one of those wheeled handbags that are allowed in the overhead compartment on an airline. I'm not sure that's so necessary, but I know when she moves, space will be a premium. I especially like the Silverstone TJ08, but it's hard to justify at $113. The HEC 6C28BB8S looks like a good case for $47, but with the harware in the center of the front cover, there is no opertunity to put a fan between the cover and case. Additionally, I don't see where the 3.5” card reader would go, as all the blanks on the cover look like 5.25”.

That HEC is absolute crap, do not buy.

I chose the H50 for two reasons; space and noise. But I'm not convinced that I made the right choise. I have never put together an AMD system before, and I don't know anything about the stock HSF. I suppose it really depends on how much power she wants from her CPU. If she wants to start doing a bunch of encoding, she will want 4 cores going as fast as they can. In that case, I should probably buy a chip with 4 guaranteed working cores for about $30 more than a 3 core with only the possibility of firing up the 4th core. It makes sense to wait on the H50 till she starts demanding more of a load, but doesn't want to pay the noise penalty. How noisy is the stock cooler?

Not very when attached to an Athlon II quad.

No one addressed the likelihood of using the 4th core of a 3 core CPU. I suppose there really isn't a good answer, and I should probably just pay the extra 50 percent premium to have a sure thing. The 50 percent higher cost only provides about 15 percent improvement, but compared with the overall cost, $30 isn't that much.

Bingo

I don't understand why anyone would recommend, or run their own computer, with only 1 hard drive. You know that your hard drive is going to fail. Without a second drive to back up the one you use, how do you expect to recover when your drive gets trashed? In my view, running a computer without two drives is like jumping without a reserve chute. Anyone who does this often enough will eventually crash and burn.

Cloud is your friend. Off-site, automatic, cheap.

Thank you very much, mfenn, for pointing out Newegg had dropped their 1Tb F3 price.

No problem

 

[DominionSeraph]

??

Why don't you ask her if she'd rather have a laptop? For that kind of dough you can get an i5. Or you can save $300 and go with a Pentium dual-core, which is probably more than she'll ever need.

Girls seem to like the 15" form factor.

 

[FishAk]

Cloud is your friend. Off-site, automatic, cheap.

Can you elaborate a little? I don't think I understand. I don't think you are talking about an online backup solution like Carbonite, because that would be very expensive- about the cost of a 1Tb drive each year. It also would take more than 5 months to upload 500Gb to that service, and more than a month to recover 500Gb.

The more I think about this, the more sure I am that you're talking about something else.

Why don't you ask her if she'd rather have a laptop?

This is a very valid point. A laptop is compact, doesn't use much power, and has an excellent battery backup built in. These factors alone make a laptop very attractive.

However, a laptop is pretty much a disposable item. To upgrade a desktop, you may need to toss out the MB, CPU, and even memory, but most all the remaining parts, which are the majority of the cost, can be re-used. Nothing in a laptop is re-usable.

Additionally, since a laptop is limited to, at most, two drive bays, it is limited to only one HDD, and one SDD. All backups must be on an external drive, so it's important to have eSATA, or a docking station that has all the connections needed. A docking station adds cost, and since they are proprietary, when it's time to upgrade your laptop, you probably need a new dock as well.

 

[mfenn]

Can you elaborate a little? I don't think I understand. I don't think you are talking about an online backup solution like Carbonite, because that would be very expensive- about the cost of a 1Tb drive each year. It also would take more than 5 months to upload 500Gb to that service, and more than a month to recover 500Gb.

The more I think about this, the more sure I am that you're talking about something else.

Yes, I am talking about Carbonite, Mozy, et al. Does your daughter actually have 500GB of data to back up?

Personally, I don' think $55 a year is very expensive at all, not when you compare to the level of service that you receive. Sure, you could buy a terabyte drive every year, but what do you do when the house burns down or the computer is stolen or the cat pisses on both drives or your computer goes into a ditch IRT-style?

 

[FishAk]

If someone doesn't have, and doesn't expect to have storage requirements approaching 1Tb, then why should they buy 1 Tb drives? Smaller drives don't scale cheaper, but they are cheaper.


I guess I made a mistake calling this a complete system, since I didn't include an OS and external drive. My daughter already has a 1Tb ext. drive, and I have access to W7, so I left the cost of these out of the specs.


If someone has 35Gb or less of data they need to backup, and they might need to access some of the data while on the road, an argument can be made that $55/year is a reasonable price.


However, any other usage with Carbonite is simply a scam.


The 1 year “unlimited” use costs the same as a 1Tb drive, which will last many years.


$15-$25/year will rent a safe deposit box that can hold four or so, 3.5” drives. A friend's or relative's house can also be a good place to store encrypted backups for free.


After uploading 35Gb, Carbonite throttles down to about 3 Gb/day, with their $55 “unlimited” service. After 200Gb, they throttle uploads even more. At this rate, one shouldn't expect to be able to back up a 320Gb drive, let alone 1Tb. Uploading 1Tb 24/7, would take longer than a year, and more than two months, again 24/7, to recover the data.


More honest providers charge about $2/Gb each month. At this rate, backing up only a 320Gb drive for one year would cost $7680.


Off-site storage is great, and the only way to truly back up your stuff, but unless you pay through the nose, off-site also means not connected to the computer, and not up to date. While this in itself has an advantage for a backup, an internal backup that is kept up to date is important in my view.

 

[mfenn]

FYI, larger drives are faster given the same spindle speed. Most people who have 1TB drives don't have 1TB of critical data (i.e. amount of data once you get rid of the OS, programs, etc.).

I'm also not sure where you got your info about Carbonite, but I know from personal experience that it doesn't take anything like a month to upload 200GB (provided that your local connection is sufficient).

If you don't feel like Carbonite is for you, then don't use it. You do however need to make sure that the data is backed up off-site. If your backup drive is sitting right beside the primary drive, it will be taken out in any kind of disaster that necessitates recovering from backup. I fear that your current solution is simply giving you a false sense of security.

 

[FishAk]

I fear that your current solution is simply giving you a false sense of security.

Hmmm... I really don't know why you think that. I don't recall giving my backup solution. However, I'm quite confident that if you knew, you would approve. I have a 4 disk RAID 10 array backed up by 2 single internal drives. On a weekly basis, I back up to a set of encrypted external drives. Two or three times each year, I exchange the external drives with a set I keep at a friends house. (I pay for this by keeping a set of drives for him.)

I have never used Carbonite, and the information I got was from reading the small print on their site. Perhaps their policy has changed since you uploaded to them. From reading their website, it looks like if someone signs up with them now, the first 35Gb will upload fairly fast provided you have unlimited local bandwidth, and the computer is not used during the backup. However, the next 165Gb is throttled to a maximum of 512Kb/s- again, providing you don't use your computer during uploads, and you aren't limited by local bandwidth. After 200Gb, Carbonate throttles down to 100Kb/s. They stress that these are maximum rates, and that in practice, users are only able to upload between 3 and 4Gb/day between the 35 and 200Gb rate. They say that 98 percent of their users backup less than 200Gb. Ya think?

In any case, with movies, games, music, and photos, most people have well over 200Gb of data these days. I appreciate that you believe it's only necessary to backup your critical data. But with storage space only about a nickle/Gb, many of us find it much easier, and less time consuming to simply recover from a backup set, instead of re-installing, re-downloading, and re-organizing all that data that isn't as critical as tax returns. Not only is it a lot of work to put together a music, or movie collection, but if you only save 200Gb after a disaster, and your original DVDs, CDs or other media is also destroyed, then what?

I agree that an external backup set is the only reliable solution in a disaster, but with the price of drives, it's really quite silly not to have your primary drive set completely backed up with a current local set. Running a system with only a single drive just doesn't make sense with such a cheap and easy alternative.

 

[mfenn]

Hmmm... I really don't know why you think that. I don't recall giving my backup solution. However, I'm quite confident that if you knew, you would approve. I have a 4 disk RAID 10 array backed up by 2 single internal drives. On a weekly basis, I back up to a set of encrypted external drives. Two or three times each year, I exchange the external drives with a set I keep at a friends house. (I pay for this by keeping a set of drives for him.)

I have never used Carbonite, and the information I got was from reading the small print on their site. Perhaps their policy has changed since you uploaded to them. From reading their website, it looks like if someone signs up with them now, the first 35Gb will upload fairly fast provided you have unlimited local bandwidth, and the computer is not used during the backup. However, the next 165Gb is throttled to a maximum of 512Kb/s- again, providing you don't use your computer during uploads, and you aren't limited by local bandwidth. After 200Gb, Carbonate throttles down to 100Kb/s. They stress that these are maximum rates, and that in practice, users are only able to upload between 3 and 4Gb/day between the 35 and 200Gb rate. They say that 98 percent of their users backup less than 200Gb. Ya think?

In any case, with movies, games, music, and photos, most people have well over 200Gb of data these days. I appreciate that you believe it's only necessary to backup your critical data. But with storage space only about a nickle/Gb, many of us find it much easier, and less time consuming to simply recover from a backup set, instead of re-installing, re-downloading, and re-organizing all that data that isn't as critical as tax returns. Not only is it a lot of work to put together a music, or movie collection, but if you only save 200Gb after a disaster, and your original DVDs, CDs or other media is also destroyed, then what?

I agree that an external backup set is the only reliable solution in a disaster, but with the price of drives, it's really quite silly not to have your primary drive set completely backed up with a current local set. Running a system with only a single drive just doesn't make sense with such a cheap and easy alternative.

By "your solution" I was referring to the solution relevant to this thread, i.e. your solution for your daughter.

Regarding Carbonite, I believe that verbiage is in there as CYA measure. I've never experienced any throttling.

 

[Zap]

My daughter will be moving to a small town in Alaska that runs diesel generators, and power is quite expensive.

The choice is then obvious - a notebook. It isn't just the lower power requirements of the CPU. Everything about notebooks is usually designed for lower power draw, from the HDDs to the ODDs to the LCD backlight. Even the chipsets are usually special lower power versions of desktop chipsets.

However, a laptop is pretty much a disposable item. To upgrade a desktop, you may need to toss out the MB, CPU, and even memory, but most all the remaining parts, which are the majority of the cost, can be re-used. Nothing in a laptop is re-usable.

Is power expensive for her or not? If it is as expensive as you previously suggested, then in the long run the power savings outweigh not being able to recycle parts. Also, some of those parts which can be kept through an upgrade, perhaps shouldn't be kept through several upgrades. For instance, a fancy/expensive 80+Gold unit probably would not be as efficient a few years down the line (components in PSUs degrade over time).

 

[Ruger22C]

"Processor: Athlon II X3 425 $63"

740 heka

"Cooler: Corsair H50 $80"

CM 212+

"PSU: SeaSonic X650 Gold 650W $140"

For less you could get an 850w LAZER... for even less you can get their 650W at .. $90?
Or, you have no video card.. Get the 480w? ThermalTake.. Good reviews, only about $40.

"Case: Rosewill Micro Tower $40 with shipping"

With the money you saved on the PSU and the HSF you can get an NZXT Beta Evo for about $20-$25 more. Check out the NZXT Gamma, it might be cheaper - they're almost the same case.



Reading back, you're concerned about electricity usage.

It might be 'gold' rated, but remember that it's only 'gold' if you're drawing a certain % of it's maximum power. If you're too low (most likely with onboard video), it won't be gold. That's my understanding.

 

[mfenn]

It might be 'gold' rated, but remember that it's only 'gold' if you're drawing a certain % of it's maximum power. If you're too low (most likely with onboard video), it won't be gold. That's my understanding.

Right on! :thumbsup:

 

[Ruger22C]

Right on! :thumbsup:

Sweet.